IGN Presents the History of Pandemic

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The rocky journey of the recently fallen developer.

By Travis Fahs

It's been nearly ten years since Pandemic Studios' first game, but instead we find ourselves at a funeral and not an anniversary party. Once a proudly independent studio, they recently found themselves being downsized by a large parent company in the wake of trying economic times. Although EA's past closings of once-independent companies like Westwood and Origin have generated a lot of negative feelings over the years, it's hard not to understand why EA chose Pandemic. They had struggled to adapt to the realities of being such a large team married to a single publisher. Pandemic was never a very consistent studio, and like all of us, they made a few mistakes. However, there were flashes of brilliance that made it hard to see them go.

Leaving Home

Pandemic's life began in the halls of Activision's offices. In the late 90s, Activision – hardly the same company they are today – was earning a name for themselves on the PC market with innovative games unlike anything on the console market. Although many members of the team that would later form Pandemic worked on Interstate '76 and Dark Reign, it was 1998's Battlezone that offers the best look at where Pandemic was headed.

Battlezone was no small accomplishment. Although packaged as a revival of Atari's vector classic, it took the kinds of risks Atari was unwilling to with Battlezone 2000 or Hover Strike, and ultimately borrowed little more than the name. Instead, they pioneered a new hybrid genre, blending the tank-based action of its namesake with a complex real-time strategy system.

It wasn't some crude mish-mash of those elements. Instead, they worked together, as players commanded units and built bases from within the cockpit of their trusty tanks. Although the learning curve was steep, it managed to balance both elements in a meaningful way, so that they supported each other rather than obscuring each other.

Battlezone also abandoned the thin setting of the original arcade game, which lent little more detail to its world than the existence of a volcano. Instead, it told a clever retro sci-fi themed story of an alternate Cold War history in which the space race had become an actual battle for distant worlds. This kooky premise and the exaggerated visual style that went with it lent plenty of style to the ample substance. Battlezone was met with near universal praise from critics and is still beloved by fans. Alas, the sales numbers didn't reflect the high praise it received.

It was around this time that Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick decided to leave the security of Activison to strike out on their own. It wasn't so much that they were lacking creative freedom at Activision, but rather that they wanted to be able to establish their own culture and their own style of management. They modeled their company in part after Bungie, still a small independent outfit at the time, and many years away from Halo.

They brought with them many members of the Battlezone team, as well as several Australian developers who had worked on Dark Reign at Auran and had since taken jobs at Activision. The initial exodus was 16 people, but by the time they ramped up for their first game, their ranks had grown to more than 30.

Their first game was, fittingly enough, a sequel to Battlezone. Despite the tepid commercial response to the first, Activision was encouraged by the strong reviews and enthusiastic reaction by fans, and hoped to see if they could build on the concept in a way that might welcome a few new players. This proved easier said than done.

The team at Pandemic expanded the interface considerably to better allow players to command groups of units and send them off screen. They also worked to design a campaign that would ease action players into the action more gradually, so as not to scare them off. The cold war theme was abandoned in favor of a more familiar sci-fi alien invasion motif that made things a bit easier to digest at a glance – in addition to offering some new possibilities as far as units go.

Battlezone was a very tough act to follow, on a few levels. The game's modest sales meant there was a definite need to broaden its appeal, but the rabid fan base and strong reviews seemed to indicate that it wasn't broken and didn't need fixing. While Battlezone II wasn't a radical overhaul and didn't neuter the bold hybrid gameplay, fans and critics saw the simplified mission design as a serious step back. The game failed to excite the more mainstream audience, and Pandemic learned that crossing over between two genres sometimes leaves you with a narrow overlap of fans rather than a combination of them. The series never saw another proper sequel (although an N64 and a PSP version later materialized). It wasn't a great start for the fledgling company, but it was a learning experience.

They continued their fruitful relationship with Activision for their next project, a sequel to Dark Reign. Although not a major mainstream breakthrough, the original Dark Reign turned a few heads in the post-Command & Conquer real-time strategy boom by offering two sides with completely unique units – a year before StarCraft made it a must-have feature. For the sequel, they decided to move to an entirely 3D engine, still somewhat of a novelty for a genre dependent on many small humanoid units.

Pandemic learned a lot from their pitfalls with Battlezone II. Although Dark Reign was never a big hit – it lived in the long shadow of Total Annihilation – Pandemic realized there wasn't a compelling need to seriously retool it for a mass audience. Dark Reign was a respected game among serious RTS players and that credibility would help the sequel.

Dark Reign 2's well-designed interface was its best asset. Pandemic's game not only used a comfortable, familiar style of interface, but it even offered multiple camera views, including a classic top-down view. It was a more polished, better supported title than Battlezone II, with fewer bugs and frequent new content for users to download.

What it lacked, however, was innovation. If anything, Dark Reign 2 played it safe during a time when the market was crowded with RTS games. It had trouble carving out an identity for itself and likewise marked the end of its series.